Byte to Byte with Steve Johnsen

Business insights, marketing tips and thought-provoking distinctions. In Byte to Byte, marketing strategist, growth advisor, and business coach Steve Johnsen informs and inspires with a wealth of tips on digital marketing, entrepreneurship, sales, and personal growth. You can also listen on:

There is a huge opportunity to use online reviews to grow your business, and in this post I will give you some tips on how to do exactly that.

How to grow your business with online reviews

This is the second episode in a two-part post about using online reviews to grow your business. The previous post, The Impact of Online Reviews, talked about the huge discrepancy between the way business owners and consumers look at online reviews. Close to 95% of consumers trust and are paying attention to online reviews, and less than half of business owners do the same. Less than a third of business owners are proactively managing their online reviews. The post also discussed some of the reasons why business owners are not leveraging online reviews as much as they could.

We also looked at some studies by Harvard Business School, Berkeley, Microsoft, etc. on how much you can grow your business and sales with online reviews. We saw how a one-point jump in your star rating can have a huge impact on your conversion rate and your sales. We also talked about the difference that one review can make in your average star rating if your rating is on the fence.

Even if you get all your business through referrals (which is good), you may not realize how much your online presence—and reviews in particular—are affecting your referrals. Our last post explained why some people are losing referrals right and left because of online reviews.

In this post, we’ll get into some of the details of how to get reviews, best ways to manage online reviews, as well as some specific tips regarding Yelp.

We’ll get to best practices for growing your reviews, managing your reviews, and responding to reviews in a minute. But because of all the questions I’ve gotten about Yelp, I want to address the question of Yelp first.

Where are my Yelp reviews?

A lot of business owners that I talk to—a lot of my clients—have complained to me about Yelp.

You probably are aware that Yelp has a history of lawsuits filed by business owners, and there’s even a documentary coming out about Yelp. The documentary alleges a “mafia style protection racket” being run by Yelp. Now, I’m not suggesting that this is the case. I do understand, though, the frustration that business owners feel. Yelp has some pretty aggressive sales people, and it’s probably true that they may have said some things to business owners to insinuate that they’ll get favored if they advertise with Yelp. But I believe Yelp is genuinely trying to bring some objectivity to the reviews process. I think their approach is misguided in some ways, but I don’t think it’s malicious.

Differences with Yelp

There are ways to deal with these issues on Yelp, and it’s one of the things we help our clients with. Yelp does a few things that are different from a lot of review sites.

First, Yelp has a policy against asking for reviews. If you say to a customer, “Hey, if you like our service could you leave us a review on Yelp?” you are violating Yelp’s terms of service. If Yelp finds out about that, they reserve the right to delete all your good reviews or to remove your listing from their website. I think this is misguided. There is an inherent bias toward negative reviews, because it’s the people that are upset who are more likely to post a review. I believe we need to regularly ask all our customers for reviews to counter that bias.

Yelp has even gone so far as to say that if you’re asking your customers to review you anywhere—Google, Facebook, TripAdvisor, etc., they can terminate your account or penalize you. To me, this is over the top. Yelp should not be dictating the terms of service for other companies’ websites. But anyway, that’s what they say, although I don’t know how they can police it.

Second, another thing that Yelp does differently is that they are really aggressive about not publishing reviews that may be fake. It’s more of a shoot-first-and-ask-questions-later policy. Yelp admits on their website that 28% of reviews—almost a third of reviews—don’t actually get published. So the business owners that talk to me are really frustrated, because they’ll see a fake review from somebody who’s not a customer get published on Yelp when it shouldn’t be and three or four really positive, very legitimate reviews that don’t get published and aren’t being factored into their star rating. That’s just really frustrating to people.

I don’t believe that this is deliberate or malicious on Yelp’s part. I believe they’re genuinely wanting to filter out fake reviews. But it doesn’t appear that they’re taking an approach that most people would agree with.

Help with Yelp

So one of the things that we’re doing with our clients is getting them Help with Yelp. This is part of our MoxyBoost Guardian review management program. We help our clients learn how to take those positive reviews that have been hidden on Yelp and are not published and get them published. We’ve looked at some of the factors that makes Yelp label a legitimate review as a fake one, and when you change those factors you stand a good chance of getting the good reviews published. A lot of it has to do with whether the user has a fully completed Yelp profile and how much content they’ve contributed to Yelp.

We also help our customers with how to get fake negative reviews removed. You can flag fake reviews if they violate Yelp’s terms of service, and it’s really helpful to point out what term of service is being violated when you do the flagging.

So we help our customers learn how to grow their Yelp presence without paying Yelp’s advertising fees, because that same money would be a hundred times more effective if invested in a good local SEO program or some other more efficient form of advertising.

The point is that there is a way to manage your Yelp reviews, and there are ways to manage all of your reviews across the major review sites.

Best practices for managing online reviews

So, let’s talk about best practices. Here are just a few tips, in no particular order.

Have a system for asking for reviews.

Now, I know this is not necessarily easy to do. You really have to stop and think about your process and incorporate this into your process and train your employees; but, have a system. Tools can really help. One of the things we give our customers in our MoxyBoost Guardian program is a feedback page and a mobile app. So, they can put in their customer’s mobile number or email address and click a button and the customer gets an invitation to provide feedback. You just make it part of your process. You train your employees to make it part of their process, and every time you serve a client you say, “Hey, can I send you a request for some feedback?” Then our tool takes any kind of negative feedback and sends it directly to you, and if there’s positive feedback, we invite the customer to provide an online review and give them some direction on where to go to do that—because that’s a challenge for a lot of your customers. Even if they want to leave you a review, they may not know where to go or how to do it. So, having tools is good. But having a system and making it part of your process is also important.

Respond to negative reviews promptly and properly.

If you get a negative review, respond to it promptly and politely. Although it may not feel like it, people are doing you a service by providing feedback. Even if it’s feedback that you don’t want to hear, it’s probably something that you need to hear. And even if it’s not something you need to hear, it is probably something you need to address.
The best way to respond to a negative review is to do it politely. In our MoxyBoost Guardian program, we provide lots of sample responses to our clients, and we even have a service where we respond for our clients right away to any new reviews.

If you take the negative review personally, it’s hard to formulate a good response. But if you respond to the review quickly and well, many times you can get customers to modify their negative review. They were posting a review because they’re upset and they want to be heard. When you respond politely and appropriately, they feel heard. Maybe you’ll be able to address their concerns, and you might change that negative review into a very positive one. At the very least, most review sites allow you to respond publicly, and so anyone who’s looking at that negative review can also see that you are responsive and care about customer service. And they can also see your side of the story.
So respond to negative reviews right away, and respond politely, without getting upset. Or, hire someone to monitor and respond to reviews for you.

Respond to positive reviews.

It’s also good to respond to positive reviews. You don’t have to post a thank you to every positive review that’s put up on Google or Yelp or TripAdvisor or Facebook; you can if you want to. But many review sites also allow you to respond privately. You can actually respond privately to both negative and positive reviews. You can respond privately to positive reviews and say, “Thanks for the feedback. I really appreciate your taking the time to leave this review.” You can also respond publicly, and people who are looking at your online reviews know that you’re paying attention, that you’re engaged with your customers, and that you care. So it’s a really good thing to respond to reviews.

Don’t incentivize reviews.

Don’t pay for reviews. Don’t offer people a coupon. It’s not just that you shouldn’t pay for positive reviews or offer a coupon for a positive review, which violates the terms of service on every review site and can get you in trouble with the government. You also don’t want to incentivize people to leave a review. The reviews should be something objective. If you’re providing an incentive, you’re making it less objective and the FTC has something to say about that. So don’t incentivize people to leave a review.

Yes, I know probably a few of your competitors have fake reviews created for them, and it’s frustrating to see those not get flagged. If you want to, you can go and flag them, or have a friend of yours flag them as fake reviews. But don’t go create those yourself. It’s just not ethical.

Watch out for guaranteed minimums

Don’t hire someone who is guaranteeing a certain number of reviews or a certain number of positive reviews, because the only way they can guarantee that is to create fake reviews. Avoid any kind of service that is guaranteeing that you’ll get positive reviews, because I can almost guarantee that they’re creating fake reviews to do that. You just don’t want to deal with those people.

Comply with Yelp TOS

Be aware that Yelp penalizes businesses that ask customers for reviews—at all. It’s not just asking for positive reviews. If you’re asking customers to leave a review on Yelp in any way and Yelp finds out, they can penalize you. You can say that you’re on Yelp, and you can say, “Find us on Yelp.” But you may not want to link directly to your Yelp profile. At a minimum, don’t link to your Yelp profile and say, “Leave us a review.” If you do ask customers for reviews and they are Yelp users, tell them to find your business on Yelp and review it.

How to ask for reviews

Let’s talk about how to ask for reviews. This is one of the biggest things that comes up with my clients. They say, “I don’t know how to ask for reviews. It feels awkward. When do I do it? What do I say?”

People want to share

The thing to keep in mind is that people want to share. Asking for reviews may feel awkward, because it feels like we’re asking people for something. But in reality, people love to share their opinions. They love to be heard. A lot of times they just don’t think about it. They don’t think about posting a review, or they don’t know that that opportunity is there. But they love to share their opinions, and they might be quite flattered that you asked. If somebody’s really happy with your service, they want to repay you in some way. If leaving a positive review is something that they can do for you, that will help you out and help out some future customers, they’re generally happy to do that.

Ask in person

The best way to ask for a review is in person. Especially if somebody is saying, “Thank you for your wonderful service,” or telling you how good your service was, you can say, “That’s great to hear. We do our best to take care of people that way. Thank you so much for providing that feedback.” You can then go on to say, “You know, it’s that kind of feedback that can really help other prospective customers feel more confident in choosing us. So if you don’t mind, could you write what you just said in a review on Google (or Facebook or TripAdvisor or Better Business Bureau, or whatever site you want to send them to). That would be really helpful.”

In the tools that we provide our clients in our reviews management program, MoxyBoost Guardian, we make it easy to link to the top sites that you want people to leave reviews on, and you can use our app to share those links with your customers. But you can also do the same thing yourself and help them know where to go. When they let you know how much they appreciate you, you say, “Thanks for the feedback. That kind of feedback can help other potential customers in deciding to work with us. If you’re willing to share it, it would be great if you could share what you said to me in an online review.” If you have an app or some online tools, you can put in their mobile number or their email and the process is automated. Or you can give them a list of your review sites and they can then write the review when they go back home.

Strike up a conversation

When you’re looking for reviews, it reminds you to keep tabs on your customer service. You can strike up a conversation with clients in your office or store and ask them, “How was your experience?” Don’t jump directly to asking for the review, but if they keep the conversation going and you have the sense that they’re open to it, you can ask at the close, “Well, thanks for the feedback. We love sharing that kind of info with potential customers so they can feel more comfortable choosing us. If you’re willing to share it, it would be great if you could share what you said to me in an online review”

Not in your office or store

Here’s another Pro tip: Don’t have people leave reviews while they are in your office or in your store. Google, Yelp, and all the major review sites know when someone is posting from your office. If customers do post from your office, there’s a high likelihood it will get flagged as fake. So, have your clients go home or back to their own office to leave the review.

Ask over the phone

If you don’t have the opportunity to ask the customer in person, you can also ask over the phone. In the same kinds of conversations, especially if somebody’s appreciating your service or if you just concluded your transaction, you can say, “Have we taken care of everything? How was your experience today?” If you have a sense that they are open to it, say, “Hey, if you wouldn’t mind would you share that in an online review?”

Ask via email

You can also ask customers via email. You can send out an email blast to all of your past clients. Or even better, send a personalized email to your client. It’s much better than a bulk email.

You can also incorporate your request for a review into your email templates, and make it part of all your organization-wide emails. You can have something at the bottom of each email that says “Did you like your experience? Leave us a review.”

You can make this part of your service delivery process via purchase receipts, thank you pages, etc.

Or, if you’ve got some kind of review management tools, instead of asking directly for reviews you can say, “Provide your feedback here.” Then the tools will catch the negative feedback, and if the feedback is positive, it will ask the customer for an online review in an automated fashion.

Vendors and partners too

It’s not just customers that you can ask for reviews. You can also ask your vendors or your partners or other people that you’re doing business with. They might be very happy and willing to give you a review.

Review management tools

I don’t know your situation. Maybe you already have a review management program, or maybe you’re not in a position right now to grow your business with online reviews. But I would be very remiss if I didn’t tell you about our programs. We have a reviews management program called MoxyBoost Guardian which costs less than half a cup of coffee a day. But it’s actually not a cost. It’s an investment, one that could have a huge return on investment for you.

With MoxyBoost Guardian, we’re actually monitoring 50-plus different websites for you every single day, letting you know when somebody leaves a review so you can respond. We also have tools that allow you to solicit feedback from customers and direct them to the right places, the places you want them to go to leave an online review.

We have a step up from the MoxyBoost Guardian program called MoxyBoost Alpha Team, where we are actually managing and responding to the reviews on your behalf. If somebody leaves you a review, we’ll go in and make the response, using your voice and interacting with your customers for you.

I highly recommend using a reviews management program like this, because it’s not about what the program costs; it’s about what it’ll cost you not to use it.

How much will it cost you if you have negative reviews you don’t know about?

How much will it cost you if your competitors have much better reviews than yours?

How much will it cost you to accept 20% slower sales growth than you deserve?

Your potential customers are online searching for you every single day, and I really want them to find you.

One quick request from me: If you are a regular listener of our podcast, or if you found this post useful, or if you’ve been a client of ours, I’d like to ask you for a review. If you could go to Google or Yelp or SuperPages or YellowPages or Facebook—whatever your favorite platform is—and leave a review for Cloud Mountain Marketing, I would surely appreciate that.

Also if you’ve enjoyed this post and found it beneficial, pass it on to others. Feel free to forward the email you received, or send this link to somebody else.

The impact of online reviews on your business

This is the first of a two-part series about using online reviews to grow your business. In this post, we’ll get into some of the reasons that business owners are not leveraging online reviews as much as they could, and look at some studies by Harvard Business School, Berkeley, Microsoft, etc. on how much you can grow your business and sales with online reviews. In the next post, Growing Your Business with Online Reviews, we’ll get into some of the details of how to get reviews, the best ways to manage online reviews, as well as some specific tips regarding Yelp.

Most business owners ignore reviews, and most consumers really pay attention to them. Why is this? Well, let’s talk about some of the reasons why business owners don’t pay that much attention to online reviews.

Insider’s skepticism—The first reason is that many business owners have an insider’s view. They realize that sometimes reviews can be a less-than-accurate indication of how good a business is. At least, many times that’s the experience with their own business. So they don’t trust online reviews as much as the consumers do.

They’re too busy—Another reason is very simple. Business owners are too busy running their business and taking care of customers to worry about online reviews.

They’re a low volume business—There are different types of businesses, with different types of volumes. For example, a restaurant has hundreds of guests a day, whereas a contractor may have only a few clients a month. Or with bigger projects, maybe even a few clients a year. For example, in the past I provided a very high-value service to a small number of clients (although the number of clients that I serve is probably about to change with the availability of the new local SEO programs and reviews management services). Businesses with high volumes of customers have a much easier time getting reviews than businesses with high-ticket, low-volume customers. Thus, with different kinds of businesses, some businesses are much more aware of reviews than others.

They don’t know what’s posted—If somebody has left a review, whether it’s positive or negative, and you don’t know about it, then you don’t have an opportunity to respond. Many times if there’s a negative review, after a few weeks have gone by you really have no idea who the customer was, and it’s difficult to respond. It’s much better if you know immediately when something gets posted.

They don’t know how to respond—If a review has been posted and you’re aware of it, you might simply not know how to respond. Perhaps you’re not sure where to go to respond, or you’re not quite sure what to say, or how to respond to that negative review.

They don’t know how or when to ask for reviews—A lot of times we have really satisfied, really happy customers, but we don’t know how to ask for reviews. We feel awkward asking for reviews. We don’t know when to ask for them; what the right time is.

They don’t know how to deal with negative reviews—Sometimes we business owners don’t pay attention to reviews simply because we just don’t know how to deal with negative reviews. So maybe we just ignore it and it’ll go away.

They’re frustrated because Yelp hides a lot of our good reviews—One reason I hear frequently is that people are frustrated, especially with Yelp. It seems that many business owners are frustrated because Yelp hides a lot of their good reviews. They say “I’ve asked customers for reviews. I’ve had really good reviews left on Yelp, but they don’t get published. So, why bother?” Well, we’ll address that a little bit in the next post.

Business Owners and Online Reviews—The Stats

Here are some statistics that are really important for you and your business. It may sound like I’m just going to throw some numbers at you, but these statistics are really important and could have a big impact on your business.

The percentage of consumers that rely on online reviews has grown from 25% to 50% to 70% to 85%, to now close to 95%. More than 90% of consumers really pay attention to online reviews when they’re making a buying decision.

In contrast, only half of business owners think that reviews are important, and 25% of business owners think that reviews are not important at all.

While 95% of consumers trust or pay attention to online reviews, at least 80% of consumers (whether it’s right or it’s wrong) trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations. Think about it—8 out of 10 of your customers believe that online reviews are at least as trustworthy as their friend’s recommendation. Nine out of 10 (or more) of your potential customers are paying attention to those reviews.

The majority of business owners do not trust online reviews, while the vast majority of consumers do. Here is another interesting discrepancy:

More than half of business owners think that if they get online reviews it should be on a specialized industry-specific website.

In contrast, most consumers look at Google, Facebook, BBB, and Yelp more than an industry specific website.

And here are some stats from a recent independent survey of business owners.

Almost 90% of business owners do not ask for online reviews. Their customer is happy with the service, but they just don’t ask for the review. At least half the time, it’s because they didn’t think of it. We just don’t think of it at the right moment to ask the customer. If you are actively managing your online reviews, you will have an advantage over 90% of your competitors.

Seventy percent of business owners do not monitor their online reviews, and of those that do, most do not look at more than a few websites a month (out of the more than 50 important review sites).

Two thirds of business owners think online reviews are biased or unfair. Many believe that Yelp (a large player in the review space) favors businesses that advertise with Yelp (even though Yelp advertising is 70 to 100 times more expensive than Google or FB advertising or a well run local SEO campaign). Therefore, they just don’t think it’s worthwhile paying attention to their Yelp reviews.

Now here’s something you might want to just keep in the back of your mind. The next time you’re looking for a vendor, notice how reviews affect you. A lot of times if I ask someone outright, “Do you pay attention to online reviews?” they might say, “No. No, I don’t. Not really.” But when they go out and they’re searching for a plumber when the toilet is broken, they might pay attention to those online reviews a lot more than they think.

So if you think about it right now you might say, “I don’t pay attention to online reviews,” but next time you’re searching for a vendor you might catch yourself doing so. I just want you to notice that, and notice how the reviews actually do affect you in your search.

Reviews affect your referral business

Now, some business owners say “Oh, I get all of my business by referral.” And that’s wonderful. That is absolutely the best and top way to grow your business. However, this is something you really need to keep in mind if you’re dependent on referrals for growing your business.

Eighty percent of consumers trust online reviews at least as much as that personal recommendation from their friend. Here’s what happens. I ask my friend or my neighbor, “Hey, do you know a good plumber?” and he gives me a name. The first thing I’m going to do before I call that plumber is I’m going to look them up on Google. And I’m going to check out their website. And if I type in the plumber’s name in Google and I see some negative reviews, guess what? I’m really going to hesitate about calling. A lot of consumers do this. So you may not think that your digital marketing or your online reviews are that critical in growing your business but they can have a huge impact on the number of referrals you get that are actually calling you.

This is just like Robert, a local contractor, who told us, “I get all my business from referrals.” What Robert didn’t realize was that more than half of the referrals he got were not calling him! People got his name from a friend, but either they couldn’t find him online when they went to look him up later or they found him but they wouldn’t call a business that didn’t have many online reviews or they found a negative review that Robert didn’t know about and decided based on that not to call him. Think about it—fully half of Robert’s business was going to his competition because of reviews.

So here’s the bottom line:

Reviews can really help grow your business.

I’ll give you a couple of different studies that were done. One is from Berkeley School of Business. Another one is from Harvard University School of Business. Another study was commissioned by Microsoft, jointly done with Boston University. A couple of studies were from marketing firms.

A study by two Berkeley researchers published in The Economic Journal found that a half-point difference in the average review rating (the average number of “stars”) increased a restaurant’s chance of selling out its evening seats by almost 50%.

Another study by a marketing firm found that a one-point difference in star rating will increase the click-through rate of people who find you in online search by 10% to 15%. They also found that businesses that had a negative average review rating (one or two stars) got even fewer clicks than businesses with no reviews. So obviously, if you’ve got some reviews, you want the rating to be pretty good.

In the same study, jumping up three points in your star rating will double your click-through rate and presumably will double your business as well.

Another study found a 20% increase in sales from a one-star increase in review rating.

Another study done by a marketing firm found that going from a 2-star rating to a 3-star rating more than quadrupled the number of mobile phone calls generated, and going from a 3-star rating to a 4-star rating doubled that number again! So that means going from 2 stars to 4 stars increased the phone calls on the mobile phone (mobile search) 8-fold.

The joint study done by Microsoft and Boston University looked at hotels, and found that increasing the star rating by one point created a 26% increase in hotel bookings, and the hotels were also able to charge more at the higher demand level. So the hotels with a one-star increase in rating were able to charge more, and still get a 20% to 26% increase in bookings—so their revenues were up significantly.

One Review Can Make a Difference

One review can make a difference in your star rating, and here’s how that works. If your average review rating is 3.24, it will display on most review sites as 3.0. That means even one more 4 or 5 star review can tip your average up to 3.26 or higher and bump you up by half a star. It makes you display as three and a half stars. So one review can make a big difference if you’re on the fence in your point swing.

In our next post, Growing Your Business with Online Reviews, we’ll cover best practices for building your online reviews. We’ll talk about how to ask for online reviews, and we’ll talk about Yelp issues in more detail.

I’d like to close by asking you for a review. If you’ve enjoyed this post, or my other posts and could take 60 seconds to leave an online review, go to your platform of choice (Google, Facebook, Yelp, etc.), look up Cloud Mountain Marketing, and make your voice heard.

Buying leads can be a great way to get some sales in the door quickly, but there are also a few situations where buying leads may not be a good idea.

In one of my upcoming podcasts I will be talking about different levels of marketing. The basic premise of marketing levels is that Level 1 marketing tactics are easy to implement (anyone can do it), don’t require much up-front investment of time or money, get to their results quickly (either positive or negative), and are non-unique (meaning you’re not different from anybody else). Typically, these are methods where the more you spend the more you get.

One popular Level 1 marketing tactic is buying leads. The theory is that someone else has invested the time and effort to build an online brand, put the effort into search engine optimization, and has contact information for prospective customers to sell to you. In theory, this is a fantastic idea. I can skip the time and investment needed to build up an online brand and a marketing campaign, and can simply pay for the number of leads that I want to pursue. Hopefully I can get instant sales results as well.

There are situations where this works, and this can work really well for some people. I have some clients who have done really well buying leads. I also have a number of clients who have found out what to avoid when buying leads.

Number one is to be sure you’re buying real leads. Unfortunately, some companies sell names or contact information of people who haven’t actually indicated an interest in the service that you’re offering. A real lead would be someone who has indicated an interest in hiring a service provider at some point. A fake one would be somebody who maybe just bought the name from a list and is reselling it.

Second, you want to make sure you’re buying quality leads. I ran a big marketing marketing campaign for a compliance software solution. We got a number of leads in from different trade shows that we went to. We also got leads in through search engine optimization, through getting our web pages found.

When we crunched the numbers we found out that the leads obtained through SEO were at least a hundred times more valuable than the leads obtained from a trade show. Sure, everybody had opted in. Everyone at the trade show said that they were interested in follow-up; they wanted to get more information. Everybody who came to our website said that they were interested in follow-up and they wanted to get more information.

But the fact is that probably 30-40% of the people that came in on the website ended up buying a software package that was worth anywhere from $30,000 to $70,000 for the contract price. Of the people who told us at the trade show that they wanted more information, that they were interested in the product and wanted more follow-up, less than one of a hundred actually made a purchase. What we found was that the ones who opted in on our website, that had come in through search engine optimization, were really, desperately wanting a solution to their problem. The ones who opted in at the trade show may have been just excited in the moment, or maybe they wanted to be entered into our drawing, or maybe they just told us they’re interested so they could take more candy. Who knows?

The cost of these leads was far higher than what we spent on obtaining the lead. Of course, going to the trade show you have all the costs of the booth and sending the people there, etc., but it’s not just the cost per lead. It’s the amount of time spent. So when you factor in all the time the sales reps spent following up on these leads that were not really that interested, the costs were much higher than the actual sticker price, whereas the cost or the time spent following up on the people who opted in through the search engine proved to be extremely valuable.

I’ll give you another example of where buying leads can not work for you. I had a real estate client that wanted a tool to give people on their website an estimate of their home value. A number of companies have databases of home values and they maintain them and calculate them with different methods. I went to one company that that offered this tool for realtors to put on their website, and before I put it on my client’s website I tested the tool.

So I filled out my name and address and said, “Hey, can I get the current value of my home?” That’s what the web page said it would offer. Give us your name and email address and phone number, and then we will email you a report that says how much your home is worth.

I filled out the form and entered it, and I did not receive a report with my home value. Instead I received a link to local realtors. Then, immediately, within a matter of minutes, I began getting phone calls. And I continued getting phone calls for weeks from different realtors who had been told that I wanted to buy a home and that I was searching for a home in the neighborhood. And I received lots of calls from mortgage brokers as well, offering me a loan, because they had been told that I was buying a home.

So this company obtained my contact information on a false pretext and they turned around and sold it to dozens of people, also on a false pretext. I had no interest in purchasing a home. I owned a home, and I was just curious how much my home was worth. So all of those people paid for a lead of someone who wanted a mortgage or someone who wanted to purchase a home, and the information was totally bogus.

I have clients that have experienced something similar with other companies where they purchased leads and called up the leads that they purchased, and the people were irate. They were upset. They said they’re not interested, they never wanted to be called, and they’ve been hounded by other callers as well.

Of course, if someone does fill out a form to get quotes, they can be very serious about making a purchase. They could also fill out a form and forget that they actually did. That’s a possibility.

Some of my clients have had some success with HomeAdvisor. That’s one that does have a very legitimate approach to collecting and selling leads. Most of my clients that have used that service have typically only gotten moderate results, but some have done really well. There are two keys to success with buying leads from HomeAdvisor.

(1) You have to call right away. HomeAdvisor sells the lead to several people at once, so if you are not able to follow up immediately when a lead comes in, you’re at a big disadvantage.

(2) You need to filter what you’re buying, and only buy leads for high-margin services. If you’re buying leads for low-ticket or low-margin services, the HomeAdvisor leads will be too expensive, and will erode your entire margin.

One of the factors that affect the value of leads you buy is that you don’t know exactly how interested people are when they’re filling out that particular form. The other is that you have a lot of people following up.

So if you don’t want to invest in your website, if you don’t want to invest in your online brand, if you don’t want to put in the effort to develop a good marketing campaign, then buying leads can be a real shortcut to filling your sales funnel and getting you started in business. If you find a good source and you find that it’s effective for you, it can be a great way to grow your business. Just be sure to do your due diligence about the company that you’re buying leads from. And also calculate the real costs of the lead, including your time spent on follow-up. And cut your losses early if the leads cost more than they’re worth, or if you could invest that same money somewhere else or that same time somewhere else and get a better result.

And, of course, if you’re ready to invest in your online presence in order to get highly qualified, exclusive leads through search engine optimization, feel free to email or call me so we can figure out a plan for you.

We sometimes think that life will get better if we have more, but the reality is that life usually improves with subtraction, not addition.

Hi, this is Steve Johnsen and I want to talk to you today about a distinction called “More versus Less.”

A distinction is something that you see about how things work in life, and once you see it, you get it. It’s not necessarily a fact you learn or a new piece of information, but it’s something you have to see.

This distinction today, “More versus Less,” can also be called “Addition versus Subtraction.”

A lot of times you might think, “Life will get better if I add more things to my life.”

“Life will get better if I have a boat.”

“Life will get better if I have a second car.”

“Life will get better if I add a new gadget.”

“Life will get better if I add a new activity.”

“Life will get better if I add more friends.”

“Life will get better if I sign up for a dance class.”

But the reality is that very often life gets better not with more but rather with less?if I get rid of some of my stuff, if I don’t have that boat, if I don’t have this extra stuff sitting around my house, if I don’t have the second car or the third car. Or if I drop some of the activities out of my life and drop some of my responsibilities, then I find that all of a sudden I’m much more creative and I’m much more free.

We think that if we go and get a new toy, that will make us happier. As parents, we noticed something very surprising with our children. The more toys we gave them, the less happy they were. They were happiest when they only had a few toys.

And it wasn’t just toys, or “stuff.” We think people will be happier with more entertainment, but that’s just not true. Children who watch one hour of TV a week, generally speaking, are much, much happier that those who watch several hours a day. The one show is really special for them. And they learn to be happy and productive with the time in between.

The same is true for activities. Running from school?to dance class?to soccer?to piano lessons?to tae kwon do?to ceramics?to the modeling coach?is a formula for stress, not for happiness.

Not only children are happier with less, but adults are too. Let’s say I want to go do some camping and I want to go buy an RV. I go buy my RV and I’m so happy. I’m going to take it out and go camping.

But once I have the RV, I’ve got to deal with finding a place to park it. It’s not allowed in my neighborhood. And I have to do a lot of maintenance that takes time out of my day. Then, after going on five camping trips in two or three months, it really kind of loses its appeal, and maybe I don’t want to go quite so often. There are other things that I want to do.

And now I’ve got this RV sitting there in my rented storage space, and I’ve got to take it in regularly for maintenance. And when I’m going to go on a trip, I have to get out the RV and get it all set up. Pretty soon I realize, “Man, this would be a lot simpler if when I want to go RVing, I could rent an RV. Or, sometimes I could go on a trip and just stay in a hotel. Or I could throw a tent in the back of my car and set up a tent.”

You see, adding stuff is not always the best way.

We can make the same mistake in our personal lives, thinking that if I add activities or add friends or add new things in my life, it will make me happier, when actually, what I really need to do is sit down and go through all the things that I am doing and all that things that I do have and consider what is really giving me pleasure and what’s really important to me and what I could just stop right now and it would free up time for something else.

Professionally, it’s subtraction, rather than addition, that is the path to success. Gary Keller wrote a book called “The One Thing” that talks about figuring out the one thing you need to do for business success, and then letting everything else go. Darren Hardy in his success course teaches something very similar. If you want to be really successful, don’t write a list of all the new things that you should add into your daily schedule. Instead, take assessment of all the things that you’re doing in your job, and figure out what you will eliminate and not do any more. You can call that your not-to-do list. In reality, your not-to-do list is so much more powerful than your to-do list!

Serving versus pleasing: these are absolutely not the same thing, and getting the distinction between the two will make the difference between success and failure.

Hi, this is Steve Johnsen. I talked in episode 7 about how “Wealth Comes from Service.” I got a few questions about that, so today I want to talk about a key distinctions between serving and pleasing.

First, let me define what I mean by a distinction. A distinction is more than a piece of information. It’s even more than a concept. It’s something that you really have to see. Once you see it, you get it deep down in your core, deep down in your gut. Then it’s something that you can’t unsee.

The distinction that I want to talk about today is called serving versus pleasing. This is a distinction that was somewhat hard for me to get, and occasionally I still get confused and forget about what I’m doing and end up pleasing people instead of serving.

You know that wealth comes through service. Wealth comes through serving others. And yet, there are people who will tell you “I and serve and serve and serve all day long and I’m not getting anything out of it.”

Well, that’s possible. It’s possible that you’re serving in a way that doesn’t that doesn’t allow wealth to come to you. Or it’s possible that you’re serving in a very altruistic way like Mother Teresa and not expecting anything in return. Or maybe you’re serving people who can’t return anything to you. But a lot of times when that’s happening when you feel like you’re serving and serving; it’s actually that you’re pleasing and pleasing people and not really serving them.

What makes people feel good short term is not the same as what truly serves them. This is almost by definition, because all growth takes place outside our comfort zone. Attaboys are important and good. But when the thing someone really needs is a course correction, the attaboy doesn’t serve them.

A large number of people who are into personal growth are also into hoping and dreaming. This is the “Disney” path to non-success, “Someday my ship will come.” If I help people to dream big and plan for what they would like to happen in the future, I make them feel good. But this is a real disservice. If they’re dreaming and planning something for the future, that means they’re not building it right now.

I had a conversation with a client recently who was unhappy with her current job and wished and hoped she could get a different job. What she really wanted was for me to sympathize with her and then maybe to visualize what life would be like with a new job. This would have pleased her. But what really served her was to identify the critical action steps she needed to take right now, this afternoon, that would get her prepared for the new job. This is not what she wanted to hear, but it is what really served her. Without that, all the wishing and hoping are a life-destroying opiate.

What pleases people is to indulge their fears and cater to their comfort. What truly serves them is to shake them up and challenge them to be uncomfortable and lean into their fears. When it gets down to it, what stops you from getting what you really want is usually one of these two things.

I’m not saying I’m always good at this. I have a sign on my wall to remind me that pleasing people is detrimental to my financial health. It says, “Wanting to be liked is the biggest check you’ll ever write.” I have plenty of experience with this. Let’s say, for example, that I have a consulting client who is not getting their part of our work together done, and they’re becoming later and later with payments. If I want to please them, I’d probably just suck it up and live with it. But that isn’t really service. This may keep them happy in the short term, but it truly does not serve them, because our work together is headed for failure.

What truly serves in this scenario might be to have a frank conversation about what’s going on, not in an accusatory or confrontational way, but out of genuine concern for their well-being. Our work together is not going to succeed if this behavior continues. What’s really behind the behavior? Is the client unconsciously afraid of what will happen if we succeed? What other areas of their life are they sabotaging with similar types of behavior? Because if there’s something that’s off in one area of their life, it’s probably off in other areas of their life as well. Can the client and I agree to eliminate this behavior in our work together? Because if you don’t do what you say you’re going to do you are not going to be successful at much. That’s a real service to the client.

Another time this comes up for me is when I’m afraid of quoting a fee for doing a project. The client has dropped hints about their budget challenges, or price shopping. That’s just their fears talking. Then, if I want to please them, I let it trigger my own fears. I may feel that if I if I beat around the bush and I don’t make an offer then they will like me better. I’m pleasing them by not talking about money. Or maybe I want to lowball the price and I’m afraid to quote a fair and reasonable price because I don’t want them to think I’m greedy. Well, that may make them feel more comfortable in the moment, but it does not serve them at all. Our work together is to help them grow their business and accomplish their goals. If I truly want to serve someone, of course I need to make an offer. They may or may not want it. That’s fine.

Imagine a waiter coming out in a restaurant and being afraid to offer somebody the menu because the person might not want to order. Or the diner asks, “What are the specials today?” and I’m afraid of including the filet mignon because I think it might be too expensive for them. Then I’m really not serving them. It may be something that they want! So being willing to make an offer and say “Hey, I can do that for you for X amount of dollars” is a real service. And quoting a fair price and a good fee that will allow me to do an excellent job for the client is also a service to them.

I provide digital marketing services for clients, designing and building websites, and all the activities that enable their ideal customers to find them online. But our consulting work is very holistic and touches much more than the website. I’ve directed operations at a biotech manufacturer and been the CEO of a software company. When I work with my client, I may see things that are not working well in their business. Do I tell my client that they’re doing a great job there so they feel good and I can get the sale? Or do I call it out, even if it means that our digital marketing work needs to get postponed until the other thing is fixed? That’s what it means to serve people.

Transitioning from doing the work to being a business owner: there’s a lot to learn!

Hi, I’m Steve Johnsen, and today we’re going to talk about transitioning from doing the work in a business–from being a technician to being a business owner. There’s actually a lot to learn.

I’ll give you an example of somebody who worked for a roofer. He started out putting shingles on the roof and swinging a hammer and eventually worked his way up to where he was managing a crew?and then managing several crews. And he decided that he was going to go out on his own and start his own roofing company.

Well, suddenly you’ve got a very different job when you’re a business owner as opposed to when you were running and managing just the roofing work. As a business owner, you’re now responsible for marketing, you’re responsible for sales, you’re responsible for human resources–hiring people, payroll, etc. You’re responsible for pricing your services. You have to take care of insurance and taxes and even legal issues related to the business as well as managing the business’ cash flow and finances. There are a lot of areas that a business owner is responsible for that the technician is not. That’s why it can be a difficult transition to go from actually doing the work in the company to being a business owner with employees.

So how do you overcome this gap? Or how do you make this transition successfully?

First of all, you’re going to want to be learning a lot. The basics of what you need to know as a business owner include marketing, sales, recruiting and hiring, and HR issues. It includes financial management as well as various tax and insurance and legal issues. Those are all things that you need to have at least a basic understanding of. You can learn these things by reading good books. You can listen to podcasts. You can go to industry conferences and hang out with other business owners in your industry. You can participate in seminars or go to training programs.

Second, you can also hire good advice. You can get yourself a good small business CPA. You can find a good small business lawyer. You can hire in an outsourced CFO (that’s a Chief Financial Officer) that will help you with your cash flow planning and management. You can hire a good marketing agency. You can hire a sales coach, or someone who will help to train your sales reps. You can always find people that have skills that you don’t have to come in and help you with your business.

Steve Jobs is a good example of someone who learned how to do this. He started Apple computer and grew it to a certain point, and eventually he got kicked out of his own company because of the challenges he had in running his business. When he came back to Apple a few years later, he was responsible for Apple’s great resurrection.

One of the things that Steve Jobs had learned in that interim is that he can’t do what he can’t do. One of the really smart things he did was to hire Tim Cook to run the business part of the company while he was responsible for the visionary part of product development.

So, identify where your own skills are, and where your strengths are. Maybe there are some things about running the business that you’d like to learn, and some things about running the business that you really want to hire some good help in that area.

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